MARCH: Naturally, it was a busy week just trying to pick up the pieces from being sick for a week.

APRIL: My first session of Theology Through the Centuries students today had a discussion of the middle part of Anselm's Cur Deus Homo?/Why Did God Become Human? where we made particular note of Anselm's description of how it is human beings are seen to be "in the image of God."

MAY: A list of Good Things today: • For the first time in well over a decade, I wore my favourite shirt – from high school. I think it's acceptable again, and maybe even stylishly retro.

JUNE: Not doing the school thing still feels like a bit of the end-of-the-year luxury, and so maybe that's part of why the dissertation is slow to warm up. On the other hand, the project is like getting back together with a girl I've been dating long-distance for awhile: I'm having to re-acquaint myself with the reality of it all again.

JULY: Had some good fun with the nieces' dual birthday party on Sunday, as Grace and Haley both have their birthdays in June.

OCTOBER: Five new junior faculty positions have been listed on the American Academy of Religion website, including an ecclesiology position at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., and a history of modern Christianity position in a Religious Studies program at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

NOVEMBER: The interviews today seemed to run the stretch from good to great.

DECEMBER: Craporama. Canisius College, a Jesuit school in Buffalo and the other institution where I was pretty sure I was a leading candidate, just wrote to tell me that they were having to suspend their search to fill their Catholic Theology position because of the economic downturn.

In other news, fellow Folkhead Dan O'Brien is in high rotation on CNN today, flirtatiously hawking some kind of savory pastry puffs from Pillsbury with his pretend commercial wife, and therefore paying for CNN's reporting on idiot Illinois Governor Blagojevich.